Margaret DeRitter is the poetry editor and copy editor of Encore, a regional magazine based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She was a winner of the 2018 Celery City Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Kalamazoo's Friends of Poetry, for her chapbook Fly Me to Heaven By Way of New Jersey. Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Surprised By Joy (Wising Up Press) and Queer Around the World (Qommunicate Publishing) and in a number of journals, including The 3288 Review, which nominated her poem "At the top of Sleeping Bear Dunes" for a Pushcart Prize. DeRitter has also written numerous magazine and newspaper articles. She worked for 22 years at the Kalamazoo Gazette and has taught journalism at Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. She was born and raised in New Jersey and has lived in Michigan since college. When not writing or editing, she often paddles Michigan lakes and rivers.